The first high is what many addicts long for. Getting it back. That ‘Oh my’ feeling of utter lost and found wonder. The grail. The perfect mate. The endless search without end. I’m here to tell you I do not think it’s possible. Many folks do try. I personally haven’t (at least pharmaceutically). I play music and write songs and still long for and desire that simple beauty that occurs when I write what for me is a good one. I do not have a formula. I have a process. They do happen. Not often enough, but when they do, it is better than anything to me and there is just no way to know when it will).

There are those who have gotten ‘drug’ high, had it not agree with them, or had it agree with them so much it scared the daylights out of them, causing them to say “not for me”. Well, that was me. It was utterly wonderful and absolutely frightening.

I remember it so well. My first (and last) high. I was in the hospital. The docs had been confounded by my symptoms, coming up snake eyes for four solid months trying to identify the culprit. A liver biopsy was scheduled as one of the many search and destroy missions trying to determine how a healthy 17 year old could lose 60 lbs in 3 months with every single prodding test ringing up negativo. How 42 days of fever, three square meals and so few bathroom trips all added up. Spinal Tap the movie was so much better.

Prior to the Dr. Burnip’s inserting a glistening ten inch needle between my ribs to remove a piece of my liver the size of a grain of pepper, I was given a shot of Demerol. He told me beforehand I would not remember much of anything in about 10 minutes. The biopsy itself would be over and I would waffle around for an hour or two, not out of it entirely, but definitely not aware of the real reality around me.

I did not know it then, but I was about to learn something very essential to ‘living’ the rest of my life.

Marlo Thomas in That Girl was on the tube above my Kaiser head up angled bed. Within two minutes after I had my ticket punched, she was suddenly starring in ‘That Girl 2001, directed by Mikel Kubrick Paul. She was three dimensional, my arms were wishing to reach around her and my doctor was my dad. As Dr. Burnip inserted the needle, lightly hitting a rib of mine, I laughed. I thought it funny he didn’t. He said “Opps, sorry”. He started to tell me that with a twist and a quick pull, he’d be done. Before the end of his sentence he was.

He showed me the piece he’d extracted. I looked at it and asked him if it was big enough. “Looks too small to me”, he quipped. Then, he laughed. For the next four hours, I swore I had found the grail. Swore. Or God. Or the real me. Never having been high before but having friends who had been and were members in the purity control group, I joined them. I was sold. Completely. That quick. May I have another?

You been there?

To this day, I can honestly say I have never felt better than I did for those four hours. Never. After my little ultimate ‘E’ ticket ride ended, I was and have since, never been so scared. Or alive.

Now, I know this is OpEd News, otherwise respectfully known as Rob Kall’s World. And no, this is not an OpEd subject per se, not even close, but I wanted to write my thoughts in this personal vein to point out something I hope may be of value to someone other than myself. Or not.

As I sit here today, moping about the absurdity of all that is happening in our world that we live together in and on, I am amazed and to put it mildly, dumbfounded at the cacophony of the self induced noise that we are drowning in. Our own. How so much is broken and needs to be fixed. How catastrophe updates are coming on the hour and on the half. How the ‘elite’ have been and are stealing the non elite blind. How war is now defined as never ending. How terror must be eliminated and how only in this way or that way can we succeed. How one man is, by all accounts a savior and/or a destroyer when he is neither or a bit of both. How we must save a lifestyle that is ‘deserved’. How wrong the others are. How absolutely certain we all are.

It’s deafening.

Just like on my little self seduction trip. In the span of two minutes it felt so good I wanted more. Right the f now. How it was and is so absurd. Look at us. We want more of all this? Being farther from ourselves? Taking sides. Us and them. Counting our money. Stealing our own reality. Lying in the face of truth. No acceptance here. Accusations on parade. Ridicule rules. No hugging in school damn it.

I could have been a stump just like Johnny with no arms and no legs in Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. As long as they kept that IV in, he could not know who or what he was. They did not want to world to know he was alive. It was too painful to admit what war means. It was easier to seduce him from his reality. Funny that in doing so, the world was seduced from the truth. We screw ourselves.

We are human. Nothing more or less. Imperfect and perfectly capable of understanding what we each want and/or don’t. That we seem to preach it is imperative that we agree is to me, nonsense.

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Look. I don’t have a freakin’ clue. All I know is for me to live my life I must ‘live’ it. As long as I don’t take away someone else’s choices, I am free to do exactly that. And the last thing I want to do is alter someone else’s idea of theirs.

As I look back, I got to have 'the ride' of my life. That I realized I'd have just the one was for me my blessing. No grails for this boy.

Someone else tells me my world is a mess. Whatever. It is still my world. A beautiful mess.

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I am scared of only one thing now. That I will miss the truth. Not yours. Mine.

61 years on this jumpin' green sphere. Musician. Own and operate a music store to help kids find a possible life long friend. I believe in the soul and the search. Two sons. Published songwriter. play bass, piano and gut string guitar. there are no (more...)